A crisis is brewing between Minister of Immigration and Absorption Pnina Tamano-Shata (Blue and White) and the Ministry of Finance and threatening the stability of the government.
The Ministry of Finance refuses to add a section to the state budget that will allow Ethiopian Jews to continue making Aliyah to Israel.
The Treasury has agreed to fund an increase of only a thousand people in each of the next two years. The Ministry of Absorption demanded an increase of 4,000 people in the next two years.
In response, Tamano-Shata is threatening to bring down the government. "I will never allow them to continue abusing Ethiopians and abandoning them at the bottom of the government’s list priorities. Those who have been waiting decades to make Aliyah from Ethiopia and their families in the country have suffered more than enough.”
"I will oppose a budget that will not significantly advance their Aliyah, even at a price where I will no longer sit in the government, and I will return to the Knesset to vote against abandoning them," the minister clarified.
As the coalition has 61 Knesset members, Tamano-Shata's opposition will prevent the approval of the budget and will lead to the toppling of the government and the dissolution of the Knesset.